


The Casework of Derek Hale

by szikra



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief, Siblings, a friendly fic about grief, hale pack feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-28
Updated: 2012-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-17 05:57:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/szikra/pseuds/szikra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura is howling while she’s walking in the ashes but Derek can’t cry anymore because he starts to get that it was all his fault, only his. When Laura tells him to pack as much clean clothes as he can into a rucksack, he obeys without asking.</p>
<p>They hit the road around six in the evening, they only stop at Sacramento to eat and have their clothes washed at a coin laundry because they all smell of smoke and both of them have gotten sick from the smell. Laura turns on the radio after the first hour, but after a minute they both agree on turning it off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Casework of Derek Hale

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how San Francisco smells.
> 
> Thanks for Niq for betaing. (Though I'm sure she's an alpha.)

It happens while they are in class. At first Derek starts to shiver, knowing that something is wrong, wrong, wrong, and he needs to rest his head on his desk to not to fall to the floor… The classroom’s noises blend together into a white noise, no more as a mere humming as the teacher reads up from Romeo and Juliet and somebody behind him is hitting a calculator, trying to solve the homework for the Math class after the lunch break and a few pencils and pens are making notes but Derek cannot distinguish them anymore, he just feels that his stomach is in knots and he must have fever because the air feels cold like ice, and his chest hurts and he vomits onto the floor because this, this feeling is something that will eat him up from the inside if he doesn’t do something…

His vomit is black like tar, his throat tastes like blood and smoke and copper and ashes and he smells burned hair in the air.

He is escorted to the boy’s room but all he does is sitting on the cold floor with a wet tissue on his forehead, and a few minutes (hours and weeks and years and lives) later Laura comes in and sits next to him, her eyes are closed. She was coming to him through the corridors with closed eyes, and she only starts crying when they are holding each other.

‘They died, Derek’ she sobs, ‘I don’t know what happened, but I know they died, I don’t know what to do, look at me, look at my eyes, Derek, how will we survive?’ she weeps, and opens her eyes: they are crimson like blood, crimson like roses, like Dad’s eyes, like the setting sun, and it’s so horrible that Derek holds her closer and tells her that everything will be okay, because he can’t see his alpha being this weak. He cranes his neck and Laura bites it with her wolf-teeth. They both find comfort in this simple act, in how Derek’s blood runs down on his neck because it is finally something they both know very well, it means that they are going to be together forever, the beta and his alpha, the alpha and her beta, until the whole word ends.

They are called to the principal’s office about two hours later and they sit calmly while the police officer tells them that their house has burned down and their whole family died. They are brought to the station, they sit there for long hours, and Derek needs to stroke her hair so her eyes will remain blue while Laura signs some papers or whatever, and then they are allowed to go… well, not home, because they don’t have a home anymore, but they still go to the ruins of their house.

Laura is howling while she’s walking in the ashes but Derek can’t cry anymore because he starts to get that it was all his fault, only his. When Laura tells him to pack as much clean clothes as he can into a rucksack, he obeys without asking.

They hit the road around six in the evening, they only stop at Sacramento to eat and have their clothes washed at a coin laundry because they all smell of smoke and both of them have gotten sick from the smell. Laura turns on the radio after the first hour, but after a minute they both agree on turning it off.

They sleep on the backseats and wake up holding each other. Derek wishes he could change with her, because she must be tired, and it would take away his mind from Kate and how alone they are and how could everything be normal if he didn’t dated her but he doesn’t have his driver’s license yet, so he tries to remember the recipe of pancakes and makes up math examples and tries to recall the words of the theme of his favorite cartoon… but it not helps, because all he can think about is Kate. The fire. Her lips. Her breasts, her moans, her laugh, his mother’s smile and his father’s smell (pinewood and salt and soap)… His room. His life.

Guilt, grief, sadness, loneliness and regret creep under his skin, poisoning him, gripping him, his chest, his bones, his tongue and teeth, and he barely eats when Laura buys themselves breakfast.

He sleeps until they get to San Francisco where Laura calls the Denley pack’s alpha. She asks for asylum, she asks for a place for them to stay for a few nights. They get the address of a young couple, and Laura sleeps on the sofa while Derek sleeps on the floor because he wants to stay next to her.

He will get mad if he stays alone, however on the next day he’s already alone for hours in the flat, while Laura is negotiating with the other alpha, and when she gets back she doesn’t smell like home anymore, she smells like San Francisco, which is somehow a bit sweet and cold, but he doesn’t like it at all. She tells him that they will stay for a while.

Derek sleeps as much as he can during the next week, so he is not feeling all the guilt. His dreams are mostly ghosts of home-smells, home-noises, pack-voices and the memory of happiness. Laura goes back to Beacon Hills, and when she comes back to Derek she looks extremely tired but she is kindly smiling for the first time since they have been alone.

‘I’ve seen Uncle Peter’ she says. ‘He is unconscious but he’s alive. He cannot heal, though, so if he ever wakes up he will need to stay in… But he is alive.’ Derek only gets to see him a month after the fire, but for now, his soul gets a bit lighter. Not much, though, it’s only a feather removed from the mountain he’s buried beneath. ‘We will live here for a while, okay? I mean, not exactly here, but I’ve got an apartment and the pack here took us in and… I think we really shouldn’t use our inheritance so we’ll both need to work even if I’ve already required some aids… And we can finish this term here and…’ Derek needs to draw her to the sofa, next to him, while he listens to all these important things, but he needs to feel her warmth, her pulse, her smell, he needs her to be pack. Because the Denley pack only took them in, they don’t belong to them, they belong to each other, until the end of time, they are always going to be pack, alpha and beta, always, always…

They have a hard life in San Francisco, but after the school term ends they run away again.

It doesn’t get any better in New York, but Derek likes this place more. It’s easier to hide. It’s only the two of them now, they run together on full moons and when they wake Derek doesn’t feel others’ smell on Laura anymore.

They blend in as much as they can but Derek gets a detention on his first day at school after he doesn’t let another, bigger boy to bully him because he looks weak, small and sad and the boy ends up with blue bruises from Derek’s fists.

Laura gets angry with him for the first time they are alone and she slaps him hard, her claws tear his T-shirt and the skin on his chest. It hurts, it heals slowly, but it hurts more to hear Laura cry that night as she peels off the skin from her palm and fingers so next day she’ll wear new, soft skin on her hand and not the one that hit Derek, that hurt him, because if she hurts him then what else remains on the world that will never ever cause him harm?

They live in New York. They blend in, they grow up, they start to heal on the inside, and one day, at the morning table Laura smells like pleasure and a man unknown for Derek. Her relationship doesn’t last long but it doesn’t leave her broken instead it makes her more whole.

Derek doesn’t date. He could get dates if he wanted, but he won’t, he won’t, and this is his penance, this is his desperate trying to get redemption. Not like his redemption will ever come. It doesn’t get any easier.

They never want to return to Beacon Hills.

Laura goes back to Beacon Hills years later, after she gets an e-mail from the Denley pack about a killed deer.

It happens again, Derek wakes up in the middle of the night shivering, and when he gets to the bathroom, he feels like the air is sucked out from his lungs and he faints onto the tiles. When he gets back to consciousness his hair is clogged together as his blood dried, and it is a black stain on the tiles, black like tar, but his head is already healed. He is still shivering so he drinks a mug of herbal tea for his fever while he packs some clothes, then he drives back to Beacon Hills, hoping that he’s wrong – knowing that he is not.

He only stops for coffee and food and he only sleeps an hour during the middle of the night. The full moon is close so he handles the lack of sleep way better than humans.

The closer he gets the more his heart breaks.

When he arrives he sleeps in his car so he doesn’t have to to go inside. He cannot face it. He finds Laura’s upper body at daybreak and he washes her face clear with his tears before he buries her under a spiral.


End file.
